CHAPTER 37: POLARIS STUDENTS

Step after step, Godfrey moved through the vast expanse of golden sand under the hot sun like a nomad. He thought he knew how to survive in dungeons, but three days without a soft bed, the scorch of the sun, and beasts hungry for a fresh kill everywhere wore him down.

In the past three days, he had to learn how to find places to sleep once the sun began to set, set up his sleeping bag, and leave either Ballista or Mountain to keep watch. His pride, his knowledge, died, and his goal to compete with Isolde wavered.

However, on this third day, he was once again moving through the desert, his skin dull with yellow dust, but his eyes remained sharp.

’I’m thirsty,’ he said, and drank from his water bottle, only to watch it finish after two gulps. His body craved more, but there was none. He had rationed poorly.

Just then, he heard the familiar screeching of raptors, prompting him to tilt to the left. Two raptors raced down the dune with heavy stomps of their hind legs. They were even bigger than the alpha raptor, with their bodies set ablaze in flames.

Igni Raptors!

Godfrey yawned, cracking his neck as he activated Echo, and a longsword appeared in his grasp. The touch of cold steel and the sheen of the blade reflecting the sunlight made his eyes unleash a bright gleam.

Rotating the sword, weighing fifty pounds, he suddenly leaned back and watched with narrowed eyes as a fireball spat from an Igni Raptor’s mouth blazed right past him, nearly making contact with his clothes.

Lightning crackled through his body as his eyes turned golden for a split second before he burst forward, evading other fireballs and unleashing a fierce horizontal sweep, cleanly cutting through the first Igni Raptor’s plated throat.

The other raptor spat flames that consumed the first, intending to consume him too, but he leaped backward with all his might, soaring over two meters before his sneakers sank into the sand, rooting him back to the hold of the earth.

It leaped toward him. Godfrey swung his sword, opening a huge wound on its chest. It countered with a sweep of its tail, which he replied to with a swift horizontal swing that ate deep into the raptor’s tail.

It tried vomiting a fireball, but Godfrey’s other arm, already covered in a gauntlet, struck its teeth, causing an explosion right within the confines of its mouth.

The raptor collapsed, making sounds of pain as Godfrey loomed over it, lifting his longsword high. Just then, the hairs on his skin rose up, forcing him to leap back as something fell from above, crashing into the raptor and swiftly snuffing the life out of it.

It was a Polaris student with a proportioned build and blonde hair just like him, but much longer. "That felt nice."

He crackled, looking at his arms covered in dark crimson scales, heated up like they were made of magma.

Godfrey frowned. He looked up at the three dark golden vultures. Their feathers, both on their bodies and wings, gleamed under the sun like metal!

All three of them landed, one had no rider, the one on the left was ridden by a girl with two ponytails, and on the middle one sat Lucian, one of the top elites of House Orion.

"What’s with your face?" Lucian raised an eyebrow.

"I was about to kill that beast," Godfrey replied, his fingers tightening around the longsword.

"It was my kill—!" James, the one who killed the Igni Raptor, shut his mouth when Lucian interjected.

"Oh really?" His eyes narrowed on the gleam of fury in Godfrey’s eyes. "Eritrea, I want to see the summon that makes this sophomore so defiant."

Eritrea, the girl with two ponytails, leaped off the vulture, darting toward Godfrey with a smirk as she launched two glowing orange balls at high speed.

In response, Godfrey used Echo to summon the entire set of Mountain’s armour, cladding himself with thick, heavy armour from head to toe.

The balls exploded harmlessly against the cuirass of his armour, and he took a bold step, slapping Eritrea with the blunt part of his sword.

"I’ll shove that helmet into your skull!" James bellowed, leaping and launching a downward punch, his entire arm, from his hands to his shoulders, covered in dark scales.

Using Lightning Infusion, Godfrey moved backward and connected a Spartan kick into James’ abdomen the moment he landed. The kick made him curve, but he didn’t fall—a sign of his durability.

Seeing this, Godfrey went one step further, slamming his knee into James’ face so hard that his eyes rolled back and he slumped to the golden sand.

Lucian couldn’t believe his eyes.

Meanwhile, a diagram appeared before Eritrea, who rose with trembling arms and clenched, bleeding teeth. A green toad, its back covered in swollen, glowing orange-red warts, almost like molten blisters ready to burst, appeared. Its eyes were large and bulging, and it had a row of deadly teeth. This was none other than the Exploding Toad, whose current tier was 5.0.

In less than a blink of an eye, it launched over twenty of the ticking time bombs on its back, and all of them flew toward Godfrey at high speed and greater intensity, twice what he faced before.

A golden diagram flared to life, and Mountain, already in Black-Out, emerged, his oval shield enlarging into the Achilles Shield instantly as he defended Godfrey.

Lucian and Eritrea couldn’t believe their eyes when the explosive fireballs ricocheted beautifully back to the toad, exploding so terribly that Eritrea was quickly teleported away due to the damage.

Without delay, Lucian took to the skies on his Steel-Feathered Vulture, which made two clones of itself, once more increasing to three. All three of them launched a rainstorm of steel feathers, sharp enough to cut into boulders. Mountain lifted the Achilles Shield upward, shielding Godfrey. The feathers went back up but couldn’t pierce through the tough defences the vulture had.

"I’ll be up here and you’ll be down there. I can do all I want and you can’t even touch me," Lucian said coldly.

As if infuriated, two massive explosive balls blasted off Mountain’s feet, launching the Knight-Captain into the sky at hyper speed. Three explosive balls launched from the Achilles Shield, merging into one large ball before exploding midair, engulfing the vultures before they could fly too far.

Lucian swiftly retrieved his summon, allowing himself to fall. When he was almost crashing, large steel wings sprouted from his back and he beat them fast, slowing his crash into a hard but endurable fall into the hot sand.

He couldn’t believe it. He was a third-year student in one of the most prestigious schools in Manhattan, and a sophomore who had just awakened beat him.

The slap made his eyes bloodshot. He rose, about to move, when he noticed another knight with a giant bow aiming an arrow at him, while Mountain stood at Godfrey’s other side, his longsword over his shoulder.

The aura of both summons made him feel a sense of helplessness.

"I’ll be taking this..." Godfrey took James’ backpack and turned to Lucian. "Give me yours."

Lucian’s face twisted.

Just then, a dune a good distance away collapsed as a sandworm, two times the size of a coach bus, emerged and sank back into the desert, the earth trembling as it made its way toward him.

Lucian took the opportunity to fly, laughing heartily. "Let’s see how you outrun that without wings!"